Deeplinks Blog posts about Search Engines

My latest piece for Law.com, entitled "Could Future Subpoenas Tie You to 'Britney Spears Nude'?" (their title, not mine), discusses all the information about you being stored by Google, Yahoo, AOL and other Internet intermediaries. Google, for example, has confirmed that if given an IP address, it can produce a list of every Google search query ever sent from it.

The DOJ's demand for one week worth of search histories has raised the concern that the government will go fishing into the data set, looking for searches and for keywords that worry the government. Even if IP numbers or other identifying data is not provided, what is to prevent the government from returning to Google with a second subpoena?

Over the weekend, Newsweek has reported that:

Though the government intends to use these data specifically for its COPA-related test, it's possible that the information could lead to further investigations and, perhaps, subpoenas to find out who was doing the searching. What if certain search terms indicated that people were contemplating terrorist actions or other criminal activities? Says the DOJ's [spokesperson Charles] Miller, "I'm assuming that if something raised alarms, we would hand it over to the proper [authorities]." (emphasis added)